Tour : Cairo - Half day Old Cairo - Synagogue and Churches

Take an alternative look at Egypt and visit Old Cairo " home to the capital’s Christian centre. This half day tour takes in the Coptic Museum and the Ben Ezra Synagogue, pointing to the diversity that can be found in Egypt’s capital.

Visit the old churches, Coptic monasteries, the Coptic Museum & the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, the eldest district in the Egyptian capital, which was formerly the City of Phas built by Amr Ibn ElA’as. In later centuries, Romans built the fortress Babylon in the area, remnants of which still exist. Later, Old Cairo became the center of Christianity in Egypt, with as many as 20 churches built within an area of one square mile. Only five of these historic churches remain today, nestled between many other ancient monuments that decorate the quarter.

The Coptic Museum was founded in 1910 by Marcus Simaika Pasha, and is the most recently-built of Cairo's major museums. The museum is home to one of the richest collections of Coptic Christian art in the world, featuring antiquities of the Coptic period (300-1000 AD). Around 16,000 pieces are displayed in the museum, arranged where possible in a chronological order.

The Ben Ezra Synagogue, located in Cairo center, was built by the chief rabbi in Jerusalem Abraham Ben Ezra in the late 9th century within the walls of the Fortress of Babylon (as Old Cairo was known in ancient times). The basilica-style temple is home to a Jewish heritage library, which includes a Torah on gazelle skin dating back to the fifth century BC and an "Atlas of Moses" manuscript.The synagogue is known principally for its storeroom, or Geniza, which housed a rich store of political, economic, and social books and manuscripts about the condition of Jews under Arab rule in Egypt in the Middle Ages.

Duration: 4 hours 
Departure: 9:00 AM